10.23.13

With GNU and Linux becoming so standard it sometimes seems like GNU/Linux advocacy is dead. It’s just hardly necessary anymore. People just use Free software for almost everything, even without making any noise about it. Almost everyone uses Google, Apache, and Firefox or another browser with Free/libre software inside it. Linux Format has a short new column that alludes to these points [1]. Clients at work, which include parts of the British government (especially now that policies are improving [2]), have moved to Free/libre software without even publicly announcing it. You have to see it from the inside to know it. It’s almost as though it’s not even something that merits announcing, so nobody bothers. We’re not in the 1990s anymore.

“Just because we don’t hear so much about GNU/Linux doesn’t mean it went away.”Here in my house everything is running Linux and GNU — from smartphones to tablets and laptops or desktops. The workstation that I bought just over 5 years ago is having serious hardware problems, but it still boots, so I had it re-purposed as a media centre in the living room, essentially making even the ‘TV’ a GNU/Linux-powered appliance (Free software from the ground up). This is not a unique practice [3]. Some use GNU/Linux for music production purposes [4], so it’s clear that even areas where GNU/Linux was notoriously lagging (audio, just like gaming) there is major change now. Sometimes, as in [5], the use of GNU/Linux for music production is not even mentioned, it’s implied.

Just because we don’t hear so much about GNU/Linux doesn’t mean it went away. It’s just being taken for granted. Its rise is no longer newsworthy. █

Nine years ago, we were playing with a niche OS that had just become the default OS for the web. Now we’re playing with an OS at the heart of computer science, from educating our children to powering the world’s super-computers in the cloud.

A few months back, after I installed Xubuntu on my eeePC netbook, and this effectively gave it a second and much faster life, I also asked you if you have recommendations for my T42 box. Well, today, we are not going to do that. Instead, we will dedicate some time in rejuvenating my LG RD510 box, which I purchased four years back and then installed with four instance of Jaunty.

There’s a definite interest in Linux for music. One of my more consistently popular posts is about using Linux for music production. Gabbe goes way beyond that post, completely revealing a wonderful workflow that optimizes his machine for making music and shows how the flexibility of Linux really lends itself to creative endeavors. Gabbe also makes the important point that Linux makes music production possible for people who might not be able to afford expensive production software like Pro Tools.

The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again